One of the dreadful disease rapidly spreading across the globe in epidemics is influenza commonly referred to as “flu”. It is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae known as the influenza viruses. Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths, rising to millions in some pandemic years. The current existing drugs in market to treat influenza viruses are increasingly becoming ineffective due to constant resistance being developed by viruses and discovery on new inhibitors with novel mode of action is necessary.
The need for discovery of new inhibitors gains much attention by the research community and accordingly ample research on synthesis of novel anti-viral compounds has been reported. The parallel research in natural products has also been reported for the identification of novel anti-viral compounds so as to overcome the menace of drug resistance. One such natural product family with good inhibitory activities against the H1N1 virus is Nitrosporeusine.
Article titled “Nitrosporeusines A and B, Unprecedented Thioester-Bearing Alkaloids from the Arctic Streptomyces nitrosporeus” by Aigang Yang et al. published in Organic Letter, 2013, 15 (20), pp 5366-5369 reports chemical examination of an arctic actinomycete Streptomyces nitrosporeus resulted in the isolation of two alkaloids named as Nitrosporeusine A and Nitrosporeusine B with an unprecedented skeleton containing benzenecarbothioccyclopenta[c]pyrrole-1,3-dione. Both Nitrosporeusine exhibited inhibitory activities against the H1N1 virus in MDCK cells.
Chinese Pat. No. 103599102 discloses a novel use of a compound Nitrosporeusines A, particularly concerning Nitrosporeusines A in the manufacture of a medicament for the treatment of acute renal failure in the application.
Chinese Pat. No. 103585147 discloses application of Nitrosporeusines A in preparation of oral ulcer treatment or prevention medicines.
Chinese Pat. No. 103585150 discloses use of Nitrosporeusines A in preparation of drugs for treating immune-inflammation and especially for treating rhinitis.
Chinese Pat. No. 103585149 discloses application of Nitrosporeusines A in medicines for treating and preventing renal fibrosis.
Chinese Pat. No. 103585148 discloses use of Nitrosporeusines A in the preparation of chronic heart failure treatment or prevention medicines.
Therefore, there is a need to come up with newer compounds with better and newer activities to successfully curtail the danger of increased drug resistance as well as to improve the life span of a subject suffering such illnesses.